The present invention generally relates to a connector including a male connector housing and a female connector housing to be coupled with each other, and more particularly, to a waterproof or watertight connector provided with a seal ring at a fitting portion between the male and female connector housings. The present invention also relates to a coupling ensuring means for ensuring whether or not a coupling attitude of the set of connector housings fitted to each other is normal.
Conventionally, for example, in a waterproof connector arranged to achieve resistance against water by fitting an end portion of a female connector housing with a forward end half portion of a male connector housing, thereby to provide a waterproof capacity at said fitted portion, it has been a common practice to dispose a seal ring at such fitted portion where the set of connector housings are coupled with each other.
Meanwhile, when the set of connector housings are fitted with each other for coupling, there may be a case where such connector housings are not normally coupled due to insufficient amount of fitting therebetween, thus undesirably resulting in a half or insufficiently fitted connector. Accordingly, there has been conventionally proposed an arrangement in which a detection spacer disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication Tokkaisho No. 62-160674 is employed as means for ensuring whether or not the coupling between the connector housings is normal, whereby upon correct fitting between the connector housings, said detection spacer becomes slidable to reveal a detecting portion, and through a visual observation of said detecting portion, the state of coupling can be ensured.
In the known waterproof connector as referred to above, however, during fitting between the male and female connector housings, since inner and outer faces of the seal ring are held under pressure contact with the sides of the male and female connector housings, resistance during the fitting tends to be large and there are cases where faulty coupled connectors are formed due to incomplete half-fitting between the end portions of the connector housing, resulting from a slight insufficiency in the amount of fitting.
Meanwhile, in the conventional practice, since the confirmation as to whether the state of fitting is complete or not relies on feeling in the manual fitting work and visual judgement, reliability of the confirmation is low, and the faulty insufficiently fitted state has been overlooked in some cases. Moreover, in the prior art arrangement referred to above, since the confirmation is mainly based on the visual observation to see if the detecting portion has appeared on the main body of the connector housing, there are various disadvantages as follows.
For example, since the connector for an automobile wire harness is connected in a small space of a car body in many cases, it can not be used depending on conditions due to absence of a visual field for confirming the state of fitting of the connector housing main body. Moreover, in order to make the visual confirmation accurate, it is required to adopt an attitude or posture of the connector to facilitate observation of the detecting portion, thus resulting in inconvenience on the part of a worker. Furthermore, such a connector can not be used as a waterproof connector to be attached with a seal ring due to its structure.